China Ratifies “Beijing Treaty of Audiovisual Performances”

Recently, “Beijing Treaty of Audiovisual Performances”(hereinafter referred to as “BTAP”) is voted and ratified by the Eighth Session of the Twelfth Meeting of the NPC Standing Committee. It is reported that “BTAP” provides new international norms to fully protect performers’ voices and images. As soon as the “BTAP” comes into force, Chinese performers will gain full protection in the countries which have ratified or joined the “BTAP”.
 
On June 26, 2012, WIPO held the Third WIPO Diplomatic Conference on the Protection of Audiovisual Performances in Beijing, and successfully concluded “BTAP”. In the treaty, a wide range of performers’ rights are defined mainly for the performances in the audio-visual recording products, which fill in the gaps in the field of full copyright protection for audiovisual performances of the international copyright treaties.
 
This Treaty shall come into force 3 months after ratification book or accession book of 30 Parties was deposited in accordance with the “BTAP”. So far, 72 Member States of WIPO, including China signed the “BTAP”. And China is the third country after Syria and Botswana to formally ratify the Treaty. According to the previous situation, it will take roughly 6 years to 10 years for international treaties from the signing to take effect. And after China ratified the Treaty, we will promote the Treaty to early take effect together with WIPO. (Reported by Liu Ren, translated by Shan Yuqiu and Fan Rong)